


Scattered Crumbs

by Whreflections



Series: Hanniholidays Prompts 2017 [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, HanniHolidays Prompt Calendar, Kid Fic, M/M, Weird Will Visions, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 00:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12900153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: For HanniHolidays Prompt Calendar Day 1- Christmas CookiesA post season 2 AU Will who has settled in Alaska with Hannibal to raise their adopted daughter ponders kitchens and family and the concept of living safely with a wild thing he can never be fully certain he's tamed.





	Scattered Crumbs

It should be more difficult, to watch Hannibal in the kitchen. 

Will doesn’t have thoughts like this often, these days, but sometimes they come to him—dark and scuttling and unwanted, mice darting forth from the foundations of his mind. 

Their kitchen in Alaska is nothing like the one in Baltimore—this place holds not the shine of steel but the warmth of barn wood, the richness of brick around the fireplace built into the back of it.  It’s so clearly a home and a not the sterile workplace of his last kitchen, and yet Hannibal uses every inch of this place, too.  The fridge is well stocked, and the freezer; the surfaces full of appliances.  He’s even cooked over the fire itself, pouring for days first over books on historical cooking, eager to capture the taste of authenticity. 

And still, from his perch on the oversized chair in the corner, Will can feel the unwelcome internal dissonance pulling at him—his daughter’s laugher in the present, Abigail’s voice in the past.  The huff of the stag, blood on the floor.  Hannibal’s voice all rich and soft, the soft clang as the cooling rack is settled onto the counter. 

Will blinks, and brings Alaska into focus. 

“Just the top half, like this.”  Hannibal dips a ginger cookie into white chocolate, twirls it with a deft twist of his wrist to keep any from dripping, from marring the perfect lower half. 

Beside him, Corrine shoves her sweater up further past her elbows, stretching out the sleeves.  It’s too big for her, and she loves it—as is to be expected.  She is 7—the world is too big for her, and she loves it all with unabashed delight. 

The next cookie changes hands, from the pallor of Hannibal’s long fingers to the soft warmth of her rich brown, little ones.  It looks big in her hands and she shifts it, seizes it in both to get a solid grip.  She holds it poised over the chocolate, her grip so tight Will can see crumbs tumbling from the point where her nails dig in, sullying the smooth surface below. 

“Dad, what if I drop it?” she asks, grip never loosening, her chin tipped up to find Hannibal.  She doesn’t have to crane her neck far.

He moves to her height, an arm slipping around her shoulders, his head dipping to kiss the snug braids crossing her scalp.  “Then it will be covered in snow, and special for it.  The others will not compare.” 

Her giggle is chilling in its beauty, priceless as spun glass—and for the moment, just as cutting.  Will is trapped in-between, his eyes and ears in the present, his heart beating on the floor of a kitchen that feels a lifetime away.  He feels stripped bare, past his skin, past his muscle until only his heart remains, beating out a tempo with edges gone rigid with cold, Abigail’s blood spilling and spilling over what’s left of him—

Will’s head snaps up, the rapid jerk of a man who hears a shot and knows he has a calf lost in the woods.  Hannibal’s eyes are waiting for him, and he blinks to answer them.  Yes, he’s alright; he’s back among the living. 

Hannibal says nothing then, nothing while the cookies are iced.  Nothing even after Corinne has run to Will to bring him a prize still a little warm in the center, made better by the joy she takes in watching him make his first experimental bite. 

They’re in the bathroom, and Will’s sweater is half over his head, and Hannibal’s voice drifts out of the closet, soft and still carrying. 

“Where were you, today?”

Will swallows, and finishes the motion.  The air on his bare chest feels shockingly cold.  “With you,” he says, and it isn’t dishonest.  Hannibal was in _that_ kitchen too.  He held Will for the first time in it.  Hannibal says nothing, though, and Will knows it’s not enough, knew it wouldn’t be before he said it.  “It’s just…sometimes—“  His breath catches, too full. 

Hannibal emerges, and waits, leaning against the doorframe, as loose and languid as a cat.  Little in the world puts tension on those shoulders, but Will knows that he can have that distinction, when he wants to.  He doesn’t want to, now.  Over the years, he’s wanted it less and less. 

“Sometimes, I see you with her, and I think _it wasn’t like that with Abigail_ , because it makes it all seem safer, but I know that isn’t true.  Just because I didn’t see it—“  Hannibal says his name, low and quiet, and Will waves and pushes on, unsure if Hannibal even knows he spoke it, if it was reflex.  “I know it happened.  You were good with her, too.  You loved her, too.”  There, he has to stop.  He has written all the way to the conclusion, but the final lines are Hannibal’s to draw, as he knows he will. 

As he does, his shoulders shifting with a long, smooth breath.  “If I loved one and could still cut her throat, part of you worries I could do it again.”

Yes.  Yes, vividly, though he’s never dreamed it.  Even his nightmares shy away from _that_ possibility, of the loss of the little girl whose mother died bearing her, who would have frozen to death in a derelict building if they hadn’t found her.  She was no one in the eyes of the world—nameless, homeless, sure to be a sad bulletin in a sad article, until Hannibal lifted her, and bit her cord with his teeth, and put her into his coat.  There had been a wild look in his eyes, then, and Will had understood—he would not let her freeze, not when the ghost of his sister still came to him at night with cold fingers, her cold little nose pressing into the soft safety of his neck. 

Before Hannibal can, Will crosses the distance between them.  Whether he’s seeking to give comfort or get it he couldn’t have said, but the press of Hannibal’s palm to the scar on his stomach feels both a relief and a release. 

“You came together again, for me, “ Hannibal murmurs, thick and warm, a voice that long ago came to sound more like home than Louisiana.  “You are the only one.  I have no wish to let her fall, and test the laws of physics again.  I won’t let her go, Will.”

His hand presses closer, so close the ridge where the scar starts is firm against the pulse in Hannibal’s wrist.  There’s no need for more; not when Will can feel his own safety as surely as he’s learned to smell the coming of snow.    


End file.
